Future of Education

Computer Science Education Week, December 6-12, 2009, recognizes that computing: * Touches everyone’s daily lives and plays a critical role in society * Drives innovation and economic growth * Provides rewarding job opportunities * Prepares students with the knowledge and skills they need for the 21st century - Mickey Schafer

"Eureqa is a software tool for detecting equations and hidden mathematical relationships in your data. Its primary goal is to identify the simplest mathematical formulas which could describe the underlying mechanisms that produced the data. Eureqa is free to download and use. Below you will find the program download, video tutorial, user forum, and other and reference materials." - Fulaan from Bookmarklet

cool - winckel

Not a free program, 'cause linked to visual thesaurus, but still really fun. - Mickey Schafer

"Lara D. Hutson: We’re here with Melanie Fields, who has done extensive work with zebrafish among secondary-school students. I’d just like to briefly introduce myself. I’m an assistant professor at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. I study zebrafish neural development, although it turns out that the gene family on which I work is involved in the human degenerative disease known as Charcot–Marie–Tooth disease. It’s a neuromuscular disease and involves the degeneration of motor axons. We’re making zebrafish models progression of the disease." - Mike Chelen

Mrs. Fields taught at my high school and was one of the favorite science educators there - Mike Chelen

a whole wiki started to answer the question "How I became a librarian"! - Mickey Schafer

sex ratio 0.25, with p < 0.001. "Madam Librarian" is still the norm? - Mark A Jensen

Government website fails to build community. Quelle surprise. - AJCann from Bookmarklet

I wonder if Obama's efforts will fare better. - Mickey Schafer

Scroll down a bit to enter an interactive lab and create a transgenic fly to study circadian rhythms! - Mickey Schafer

"At the CETIS conference this month I facilitated a session on the "University API", which was an opportunity to discuss what kinds of services institutions could offer for public access to developers" - Michael R. Bernstein from Bookmarklet

I don't know, Akiva ... - Holly Rae, FFer

As announced by President Obama during today's White House event, the MacArthur Foundation and HASTAC announce the 2010 Digital Media and Learning Competition: Reimagining Learning. - Mickey Schafer

This looks really interesting. Social networked organic chemistry with online data integration anyone? - Cameron Neylon

"This week, news broke that the administration at Amherst Regional Middle School would not distribute the March issue of a student newspaper called The Chestnut Street Journal. The issue reports the findings of a student-conducted poll about perceptions of the school's mission statement, disciplinary procedures and student input in the school community." - Fulaan from Bookmarklet

Yes, I saw that, but did the school back down and let it be distributed it what I'm trying to find. - Captain Bubbles

President Obama Announces National Lab Day Initiative -- On Monday, President Obama announces the establishment of National Lab Day, a new science education initiative aimed at improving labs and inquiry-based science experiences for students in grades 6–12. - Mickey Schafer

The first National Lab Day is tentatively scheduled for early May 2010. For more information about National Lab Day, visit the official website at www.nationallabday.org. • Live webcast of White House announcement at 11:30 am ET Monday • Live web chat with Secretary Duncan and Office of Science and Technology Policy Director John Holdren at 1:00 pm ET Monday • New York Times article on National Lab Day • About National Lab Day (PDF) • NSTA’s official statement regarding the President’s announcement - Mickey Schafer

OER costs money. Who's going to pay for it? - AJCann from Bookmarklet

Also, really like the concept "A pedagogy of abundance" -- is making me sit back and think. Today I feel like I could use an external brain drive. - Mickey Schafer

"I learned about Creately, an online diagramming application, from a short Lifehacker post two months ago. I immediately bookmarked that post as a reminder to write about it for ProfHacker readers, as I think one could easily use Creately in the classroom just as many of us use Google Docs and all the other Google tools. [In fact, if I were a betting person, I'd put money on Google buying Creately at some point.]" - Fulaan from Bookmarklet

btw, awesome blog to follow. - Fulaan

Maxamad, thanks so much for link! That is an awesome blog -- just spent 20 minutes reading through the GTD posts. Good stuff! - Mickey Schafer

Rates of authorship are increasing by historic orders of magnitude. Nearly universal authorship, like universal literacy before it, stands to reshape society by hastening the flow of information and making individuals more influential. - AJCann from Bookmarklet

Good points. I'm co-author of the Seed article. We address the question of how best to define authorship in our response to comments at the New York Times blog. http://ideas.blogs.nytimes.com/2009... - Denis Pelli

"Thomas Friedman announced in 2006 that the world is flat once again. “In the future,” he said, “how we educate our children may prove to be more important than how much we educate them,”[1] reminding us of a principle that may have faded into the background as we have been pushed by NCLB and other forces toward accountability measured by neatly bubbled exams. Now, at the edge, we need students who know how to think, solve problems, create solutions, share widely, listen intently, and act ethically." - Mickey Schafer

Post is just a blurb about a speaker at a conference, but I thought this quote was relevant -- the emphasis on "how" alongside "what". - Mickey Schafer

This is a supercool pres sharing one district's experience implementing some great technology. Could be helpful for those looking for how to implement district level change. - Holly Rae, FFer from Bookmarklet

"This wiki collects information about tools and resources that can help scholars (particularly in the humanities and social sciences) conduct research more efficiently or creatively. Whether you need software to help you manage citations, author a multimedia work, or analyze texts, Digital Research Tools will help you find what you're looking for. We provide a directory of tools organized by research activity, as well as reviews of select tools in which we not only describe the tool's features, but also explore how it might be employed most effectively by researchers." - Mickey Schafer

"The Association of Internet Researchers is an academic association dedicated to the advancement of the cross-disciplinary field of Internet studies. It is a member-based support network promoting critical and scholarly Internet research independent from traditional disciplines and existing across academic borders. The association is international in scope." - Mickey Schafer

Covers many different disciplines but weighted more toward humantieis/social sciences - Mickey Schafer

Reward schemes reduce intrinsic motivation. - AJCann from Bookmarklet

Mickey good points. I experimented with different rewards and didn't find that much difference between a $5 reward and a video ipod - there is a type of student that responds to this type of competition so why not make their experience more enjoyable even if not all students respond? - Jean-Claude Bradley

Great presentation by by Stephen Downes. - AJCann from Bookmarklet

Here is the NCTE's version (much shorter than the senate bill!): http://www.ncte.org/library... - Mickey Schafer

glad to see an "across the curriculum" approach to reading/writing being taken though didn't see in the first 10 pages (haven't had time for the entire 88 pages of the senate doc) more explicit attention paid to non-narrative forms of literacy. This is likely one of my strongest criticisms of the K-12 literacy curriculum: it favors narrative to a ridiculous degree. Most adults will not... more... - Mickey Schafer

My other concern with the bill as stated is the number of times it refers to "birth through K" as a time critically important for nurturing successful literacy. Yes, that's true, and there's evidence to support the enormous difference b/w a middle-class child who's encountered an average 1000 hours of oral reading before beginning kindergarten and a low-income child who's not had that... more... - Mickey Schafer

"Radiolab dedicates this hour to an exploration of numbers. Those pesky little things on the chalkboard. Where do they come from and what do they really do for us? We bring you stories on how they confuse us, connect us, and reveal secrets about us." - Fulaan

Thanks for sharing. I've just started listening to RadioLab, and I think it's brilliant. Can't wait to hear this episode. - Joel Zehring